When I was a kid, I accompanied my mother to an Andy Warhol exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. I believe I had a project due for school which required me to create a painting based on a geometrical shape, like a 3-D cylinder, or in Andy Warhol’s world, a Campbell’s soup can! LOL!

Anyway, it was during that trip to the museum when I learned one of Andy Warhol’s famous quotes:

Well, at the time, I considered myself to be part of the future so I imagined that must mean that I would be famous for at least 15 minutes. That seemed pretty cool to a 15 year old girl from Brooklyn! But what does “famous” mean? I’ve always considered myself to be “famous” among my friends…always feeling as though my presence was appreciated. I’ve only stayed in relationships for as long as I still felt “famous” to my man…though some might think that could be a gray area. And I know that my mother always considered me to be irreplaceable. Do those all count?

Then when I was in my early 30’s, I traveled to New Orleans with a good high-school friend of mine and we had our palms read or maybe it was our rocks or bones or tea leaves…my memory fails me (as usual). But what he told me, I’ll never forget. He told me that one day, they would write books about me. Wow! At this point in my life, I had not felt as though I had done anything special. While I had attended a great high school and had graduated from college with a degree in Psychology and had gotten my Masters in Business, I still had not considered myself to have done anything worth writing a book about me…so I just laughed at him and walked away.

Now, probably ten years later, as many of you know, I live in the state of Puebla, in Mexico. And why do I live here? Life brought me here and I truly hate to move! No, seriously? I love it here! I am able to work for an American company, I have tons of great friends, the weather is decent all year round…why would I leave? Plus I can afford to live really well here, while doing something I enjoy doing.

But every once in a while, people treat me like I don’t belong…”Wow, you live here?!?! Why? Where are you from? Wow, you’re from NYC?!?! That’s amazing!” I get it…yes, I know I’ll always be from somewhere else, but why the “Wow” factor? Yes, it was AMAZING to grow up in NYC where I had everything at my finger tips, where I was literally capable of pulling off any stunt I could dream of! I’ve always said about NYC, if you’re “into” something, NYC has it! But it’s just a place…only geography.

I literally left NYC because I had wanted to see what the rest of the world had to offer me. Initially it was to discover the world of Scuba Diving on an island off the mainland of Mexico in the Caribbean, where the only thing to do was to dive. (1 movie theater, 2 supermarkets and a strip of souvenir shops is basically what the island was comprised of…though the diving was OUT OF THIS WORLD!) I also quickly realized that an American was never going to make a living as a diver so out came my bartending skills…again!

Then life brought me to Puebla…hmmm, it was way different from Cozumel, I can tell you that! Suddenly I had to actually wear clothes and buy socks to wear with the shoes I had to buy to replace the wardrobe of cutoffs, tank tops and flip flops I wore between dives. But I rolled with it…I had a job that allowed me to maintain my papers here and I learned to communicate in Spanish. Nice job!

Now I’m here in Mexico for 7 years…over 4 years in Puebla alone! And the woman who has been cleaning my apartment for over 3 years just told me one of those funny stories. She explained to me that she had been chatting with her niece and I had come up in conversation and her niece was amazed that she actually knew someone who was from the States and who actually lived here and loved it! She begged her to bring her to my apartment to meet me! Seriously?

Um…does that mean that according to Andy Warhol I’ve just used up my 15 minutes of fame? Damn, I would have thought it would have at least included a red carpet! LOL!